The Printed Letter Bookshop

by Katherine Reay

  But rather than the great father-daughter escape I anticipated, because the crash hadn’t hit bottom, Dad left me with Aunt Maddie while he headed alone to Silicon Valley to “see what could be done.” Clearly nothing, for when he returned a full three weeks later, he packed my bags, red and furious and looking on the verge of a heart attack, and shoved me out the door before I had time to dry off from the beach. Aunt Maddie stood there, she, too, in a red-faced silent fury. And I knew: blood might be thicker than water, but both were thinner than money. After all, she and Uncle Pete had invested in Dad’s fund too.

  Memories from those three weeks flooded back. Rather than push them away as I usually did, I chose to dwell within them. Aunt Maddie and Uncle Pete never had kids, so they hadn’t treated me like one. We laughed hard, watched movies late, took long walks, and worked together at their new bookshop. That’s what they called it, a bookshop, not a bookstore.

  “It’s more intimate, more friendly and communal,” Aunt Maddie said.

  They had purchased it only the month before I arrived, and they were so excited. Uncle Pete insisted on calling it the Printed Letter Bookshop because, he said, “We’ll include all the letters!”

  Aunt Maddie glowed every morning as we pushed open the alley’s sticky door, and she asked us the same question a hundred different ways. Each boiled down to something like Aren’t books pure joy?

  Uncle Pete and I came up with new and different answers daily. He offered that Stephen King and Aldous Huxley did not feel like joy. One day I chirped about that story where the brother and sister got locked in an attic and—

  That was my last answer, as I got a lecture about the “inappropriateness” of V. C. Andrews for middle schoolers. Aunt Maddie then handed me The Giver and an Advance Reader Copy of its soon-to-be-released sequel, Gathering Blue.

  For the first few days, between helping customers and taking reading breaks, I took charge of clearing out the shop’s two back offices. Uncle Pete repaired the plumbing in the tiny restroom and Aunt Maddie worked the store front. In addition, having retired after twenty-five years teaching high school English, she tutored out of the storage room. It was big enough for one desk and two chairs—and the chairs filled instantly. I was flummoxed at how happy kids seemed to be entering the shop, despite the fact that it was summer and their parents had forced them into tutoring.

  At the end of a kid’s first session, Aunt Maddie assigned a summer reading list. She then walked the student out and helped them locate a book in the shop. Uncle Pete teased her every day that the shop wouldn’t stay afloat if she gave away the books rather than sold them. But there was no need to worry. From the moment she flipped the hand-painted sign, Welcome—Please come in, the shop was packed.

  It was only the day before I left that I learned what Uncle Pete had meant by “We’ll include all the letters!” I had assumed it was because all the books included all the letters of the alphabet—and they do. But he meant something more.

  As a surprise, he had framed years of letters from students and parents thanking Aunt Maddie for her work, for passing on her love of books and learning, and for her gifts to the community. He also had a few new letters from friends excited about the shop and Aunt Maddie’s next “adventure.” Uncle Pete had also framed a few treasured letters Aunt Maddie had been given over the years, including a letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald to a Lake Forest resident thanking his family for an “enlivening” visit and a note from Ernest Hemingway to a friend about fishing.

  Aunt Maddie stood in tears as Uncle Pete and I measured the space around the ceiling molding and hung each letter, almost forty, precisely twenty inches apart in their matching black wood frames. We hung the Fitzgerald and Hemingway letters at eye level behind the counter so everyone could see and enjoy them as well.

  I also learned how long Aunt Maddie had planned for her shop and how hard she had been working behind the scenes. As we straightened and shelved books after closing, she told me the margins they needed, the composition of the stock, what genres were trending, how far out she could rely on sales forecasts, how she had contacted all the publisher reps months before and had registered with the local business bureau, and how, each night while I slept, she peppered her website designer with changes to make the shop’s website perfect. She’d already taken the Printed Letter’s first online orders.

  On my final day, before heading to the beach with a couple new friends, I cleaned the kids’ section, freshened the window displays, and colored in the black-and-white placards they’d ordered to delineate each genre. I painted Fiction with a red and purple floral border; Nonfiction with blue on top like sky and green across the bottom; and my favorite, Gardening, with a little grass border and tulips in all the colors the palette of acrylic paints offered. I drew good tulips back then.

  It was a perfect morning. The last perfect morning.

  The train’s cadence pulled me from the distant past to the recent.

  “I’d love to see you. It’s been too long, darling . . . Can we have lunch or dinner this week? Can you come up here?”

  Her call last month wasn’t unusual. She had called many times since I started law school with invitations and anticipation-filled pauses, as if nervous I would put her off. Most of the time I did—a paper, a test, a trial, a brief. Something always commanded my time.

  “Oh . . . Aunt Maddie . . . I’m swamped. Maybe next week?”

  The fact was I didn’t want an invitation. I wanted an apology. And I replied with eleven years full of next weeks with only a smattering of yeses—because I was a coward. If I had confronted her, made her talk to my dad, maybe then I wouldn’t have felt caught in the middle like a traitor. Instead, I occasionally went to dinner, again felt the stab of injustice at how she’d treated my father, and left our time together confused and angry all over again. Every encounter left me racked with disappointment in myself. As a lawyer, I was well versed in the vagaries of human nature, but that didn’t stop it from hurting when it bit or from recognizing it within myself.

  Gather the facts, make an assessment, and deal with the reality presented—and never wish for something that doesn’t exist, in a client, in a case, in a relationship, and especially in a life. Professionally, I’d have taken her apart. Personally, I never stepped up to the plate.

  Nevertheless, I should have picked up on her hesitation in that final call, the hitch in her breath before she accepted my excuse. Something was wrong. And that’s my job—to understand when a client is lying or telling the truth, to know what to ask and what not to ask, to press when necessary and to shore up defenses when required. But last month I was too busy to notice anything. Today in my memory I heard her pause—that slight hiccup—loud and clear, and condemning.

  I did check my calendar. Sometimes I pretended, but that day I had scanned it, and I hadn’t lied. There was no space. No time.

  “I’m underwater, Aunt Maddie. It’s the final push for partnership and I’m the youngest associate ever considered. How about I call next week?”

  Again, the pause stretched long in memory.

  “Thank you, dear . . .” Her second hitch bled into a shaky breath. I felt her rummage for a new topic. “I had a nice talk with your dad today.”

  That lengthened my neck and stilled my hands over my keyboard. “You did?”

  She could not have said anything more shocking.

  Then someone rapped my doorjamb. I rushed out a hasty “Excellent. I have to go, Aunt Maddie. I’ll call next week.”

  So many red flags. Yet I clicked off my phone, answered someone’s trivial question, and returned to my case du jour—a client sued, in violation of township ordinances, for keeping backyard chickens in Evanston and creating a nuisance, mainly a large colony of rats.

  One week later . . . I forgot to call her.

  One month later . . . the coroner called me.

  * * *

  Janet

  Claire pushes open the door to Bistro North, and warm air hits me heavy
with the scent of sourdough rolls. I love those rolls. It’s still early, only noon, so there’s plenty of seating in the bar area. If I have my choice, I always sit up here. The back of the restaurant wasn’t redone in the recent remodeling, and it still carries that cluttered eighties feel. The bar, on the other hand, makes me feel the way I’m certain the Modernists felt once they escaped Victorianism—they could breathe. Rather than overstuffed red velvet booths and heavy hangings, it gleams with white Calcutta marble countertops swirled with rich brown striations. High tables with high-backed stools covered in a buttery brown leather, brass fixtures, and little lamps with black shades radiate all the light and kick the warmth up a notch. It’s sleek and modern, with a timeless sensibility that makes me feel hip and relevant—even if I’m not either anymore. I watch Claire’s shoulders rise and drop down in a more relaxed mode, and I suspect that’s why she likes it here too. On some level, it reminds us of the women we were and would like to be again.

  In many ways, it’s the complete opposite of the Printed Letter. Money has been lavished upon this space. Like the bookshop, the atmosphere is warm and inviting, but details here are perfection. The heat is set at an ideal temperature, a light sweater will suffice in winter, and the windows are double-paned. We’re only a few blocks from the shop and yet a world away. We can’t hear the street traffic, don’t feel the breeze through the window frames, won’t lose a lightbulb every time someone flips the switch too quickly, and needn’t yell over a heating system that knocks like Jacob Marley climbing Scrooge’s steps whenever it clicks on. Not to mention floors that creak every time you pass from Self-Help to Cooking, reminding you that you should probably head back whence you came.

  “Is this okay?” Claire pulls off her coat and hands it with a quick thanks to the hostess.

  I do the same, giving Claire a shrug for a reply. I still don’t trust myself with words.

  She leads me to the far high table, where there is a little more space and a lot more privacy.

  “Champagne?”

  I press my lips tight and shake my head. Maddie loved champagne. She said every occasion was worthy of “a little bubbly.”

  “Right.” Claire nods, probably with the memory of our last glass in her mind as well.

  Maddie had raised a tall, full flute to both of us the night she determined no chemotherapy, no treatment of any kind. “I’ve lived a wonderful life, my friends, and . . .” She paused, then lifted her chin with that look we both knew. “It’s too advanced for the kind of fight required, and even then the odds are not in my favor.” She winked at her own literary humor and continued. “I’m at peace with what’s ahead.”

  She raised her glass with joy-filled eyes and drank deep. I hoisted mine in wobbly fingers and choked down a few sips. I’m not sure what Claire did.

  “A glass of red then.” Claire lifts her gaze to the approaching waiter. “Two glasses of your Syrah, please.”

  I smile at her, wan and worn, but grateful. A good Syrah is my favorite wine—so deep and bold you can chew it. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll be okay . . . You’ll be okay.”

  “Oh, Claire, I haven’t been okay in a very long time, and now I feel like the ground’s fallen out beneath me. It all shifted too fast, too far.”

  She lays down her menu. “You’ve got me.”

  “Not once the store closes.”

  Claire’s face falls, and with it all her color. I reach out and clutch her hand.

  “I don’t mean to be harsh, but it will close and you’ll move on. I have to work, and there aren’t many jobs in Winsome. And if I found one, no one will pay me what Maddie did. I can barely keep the house as it is, but to move means I’ll never see my kids. If it’s more effort than a couple miles’ drive from Seth’s apartment when they come to town, they won’t do it. It’ll be one more reason . . .”

  I close my eyes to stop the speed of this scenario. I’ve been over it a thousand times in the past few weeks, and the crash at the end is devastating. “I need to find a job locally, but no one’s clamoring for fifty-four-year-old snarky employees. Besides, you have your family and you don’t need to work.”

  Claire drops her eyes to the table. She can’t deny the truth in my words, but with them, I’ve also dismissed the Printed Letter’s importance in her life. It isn’t fair, but I don’t have the bandwidth for fair right now.

  “Claire?” I squeeze her fingers, then pull my hand back. “All that is for another day. Not today.”

  “No . . . You’re right.” Rather than calling me out for being a jerk, she agrees, then shifts the conversation. As usual, she keeps the peace. “What are your plans?” She blanches again and self-corrects. “For tonight, not for tomorrow or next week. For your birthday.”

  I lean against the stool’s leather back, stalling. Then it comes to me. “Nothing big. I’m heading to the city for dinner with a couple friends, and I’ve already heard from Chase. He sent a text this morning and added that Laura is due soon. I’ll be a grandmother. I still can’t get over that.”

  “That’s so wonderful. And how’s Alyssa?”

  I shift again. Talking about my son is hard enough. To talk about my daughter, to lie about her, is brutal. “She’s great. I expect I’ll hear from her later. West Coast time and all.”

  “See? This is a good day. Maddie would have loved all this.”

  “Yes . . . A good day.”

  Claire scans her menu and I look blindly at mine. Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  Through that whole conversation I willed myself not to blink, and certainly not to let my gaze drift up and away. It was a perfectly delivered lie, and held that casual flippancy that really sells it. I’m heading to the city for dinner with a couple friends.

  I have no dinner plans. I have no friends. Practically every friend I had—we had—sided with Seth in the divorce, and I can’t blame them. Even my closest friend let me have it on her way out the door. And while, yes, I hope Alyssa will call, I also hope for world peace. Neither is likely to happen soon.

  No. Never give up hope—world peace is still a possibility.

  And Chase might call. I’m sure I’ll get more than a mere text on my birthday. Maybe. Then again . . .

  What if Alyssa texted him or has already talked to him today? He always yields to his older sister. And who wouldn’t? So confident in her judgments and abilities—my golden girl. How many times had her dad and I joked about that one? Our golden girl who did so much right. We missed that judgmental streak, that stubborn un-forgiveness within her.

  Maybe we hadn’t missed it—I was once that girl. But now I’m on the other side, outside the sunshine, and it’s cold. Yet again, I can’t blame her. She’s right not to forgive me and I’m not saying she should—I’m just saying . . .

  Nothing. I’m not saying anything. One text is enough. It has to be. And Claire is right . . . This is a good day. Maddie would narrow her eyes and cluck her tongue if I said otherwise. Every day is a gift and a blessing. She said that constantly, and the way she walked the talk proved her out. Death itself never scared her. How can I argue with that?

  I asked her once, “How are you not scared?”

  “Of what? I’ll see Pete. I’ll see God.”

  Those thoughts brought her peace. They terrify me. Like in that kids’ book when the beaver mentions a lion and three kids feel different iterations of joy, but one feels absolute terror. I’m the kid in terror.

  I replied flippantly, “It might not be as pleasant as you think. There’s a lot of fire, brimstone, and judgment, besides all that love you talk about.”

  Maddie smiled at me then. She was depleted of energy, but she was peaceful. So peace-filled I felt breathless for her advice. “You’re misunderstanding God and grace, and mercy too. Promise you’ll keep at it.”

  I laughed off her concern and care, for it wasn’t the magic pill I thought it would be. “Sure I will, but with my limited understanding, I’ve got him pegged close to Gandalf and I fall righ
t beside him into the abyss. The Balrog gets us both.”

  She shook her head. That slight motion looked painful. “I never would have recommended Tolkien if that’s all you got from him.”

  “I’m kidding.”

  “I’m not,” she whispered. Her hand was ice. “Our understanding is so limited, Janet. Be careful not to assume God’s role or presume you understand his ways or the depth of his love. Promise me.”

  I gave a quick promise as something switched our attention. We were soon laughing together, but that stayed with me. Don’t assume God’s role or presume you understand his ways . . .

  Knowing Maddie, she probably thought I was being too hard on myself, that all could be forgiven, that good can come from pain, and that all this will have meaning on some level, someday.

  But sometimes—not often, but sometimes—Maddie was wrong.

  * * *

  Claire

  Lunch was a quiet affair. Claire tried to engage Janet in conversation, but every attempt sputtered out. Soon she, too, became lost in memory. So lost that after lunch, she pulled into Maddie’s driveway rather than her own. She turned off the ignition and sat. The house was dark, and dead leaves dotted the front steps. It felt empty, lonely. Oddly, it evoked the same feeling she often got from her own house when Brian and the kids were out.

  She walked up the front steps, making a mental list. She needed to sweep the porch and buy timers for the lights. The sun would set in a couple hours, by four thirty, and that was much too long a night for the place to be dark. Maddie’s house shouldn’t look abandoned—no matter what happened to it or who might own it next. At present it was still Maddie’s and deserved to be cared for.